Home
by MortalCity
Summary: “I didn’t die,” she hissed vehemently, meeting his forlorn expression with a biting glare. “You did.” One-shot. MerDer. Post 4.11. Meredith and Derek return to the scene of the crime and search for solace in the wreckage.


**Author's Note: I know I'm supposed to be working on Step by Step, and I am, but this idea took hold and wouldn't let go. The end of "Lay Your Hands On Me" left so many of us with a burning desire to address the issues. Here's my take.**

**HOME**

Meredith dragged the pad of her index finger along the sharp edge of the Jose Cuervo label and stared numbly out across Elliot Bay.

An hour earlier, she'd been sitting in the hospital, keeping vigil over baby Tuck and staring in wonderment at the quiet, unwavering strength of her mentor. She had lingered hours after her shift was supposed to end, stroking the baby's tiny arm and checking his vitals. Not out of necessity, but because it felt right. Productive. Like she was doing something to help.

She'd been checking Tuck's blood pressure for the eighth time when Dr. Bailey's voice had shattered the fragile silence.

"_Go home, Grey."_

She had responded with some soft, stuttering, incoherent expression of incredulity that had ceased as soon as Bailey had looked her in the eye.

"Look, I appreciation your concern. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's not necessary. I am not going to break today." The stern, deliberate nature of her words reflected a resolve that Meredith envied greatly. "I appreciate what you're trying to do." She hadn't had the heart to tell Dr. Bailey that what she was trying to do had little to do with concern for Tuck and even less to do with concern for Dr. Bailey's mental state. She had complete faith that both Tuck and Dr. Bailey were going to be fine. She was trying to hope. And, somehow, hope was easier to come by when you were watching a mother—a real mother—with her child. "Go home, Grey." She snorted incredulously into the distance. Home. She wasn't entirely sure where home was anymore. Her mother's house was a place of residence, certainly, but the lingering memories of an unhappy childhood made the feeling of home impossible. She could enjoy herself at her mother's house, but she'd never felt safe there. Not since Thatcher left. And there was something decidedly morbid about calling the hospital "home." 

She'd felt at home in Derek's arms once.

Meredith let out a derisive snort and resumed her intense study of the tequila bottle.

She hadn't known where to go once she'd left the hospital. Rumor had gotten around that Derek had a date, so Joe's was out of the question. She supposed she could've gone back to her mother's house, but Alex and Lexie were fighting, and George and Izzie were trying desperately to untangle themselves in a way that caused minimal damage, and Cristina was turning soft. Besides, Meredith needed a reason to hope, and her mother's house was too drama-laden for hope to have a fighting chance there.

She'd stopped by a liquor store on a whim. Tequila had always had a way of making things seem brighter and shinier than they really were. But now that the car was parked; now that she was sitting down, she couldn't bring herself to drink. She was trying to get ready—no, to get _better_—and somehow, tequila didn't seem like a productive part of the healing process.

She lifted her chin and studied the dark water below the dock. Almost immediately, she found herself blinking back tears.

For the first time in a long time, she wanted her mother.

She heard footsteps approaching, but she didn't turn around until a familiar voice interrupted her brief moment of self-pity.

"What are _you_ doing here?"

With a heavy sigh, Meredith pulled her legs up and rested her elbows on her knees. "I could ask you the same question," she responded dryly. Her eyes remained focused on the water. "Heard you had a date."

"I did." He sounded slightly bewildered, as though he didn't know what to make of her frankness.

She allowed herself one silent, bitter chuckle. "Did it not go well, or is she just the type who turns in early?"

She had anchored herself to Tuck's bedside partly to keep from scouring the hospital in search of the circulation nurse. She had no idea what the woman looked like; she only knew her name. _Rose. _

For just a moment, she thought about opening the bottle of tequila. About how good just one gulp would feel going down.

"Meredith…"

She steeled her shoulders against the warning edge in his tone.

"What?" she volleyed lightly. "Am I not allowed to talk about the other woman?"

She didn't have to see him to know that his mouth was set in a rigid line. "She's not the other woman, Meredith," he ground out tersely. "We had one date."

"And you kissed," she reminded him. "In a scrub room."

He sighed exasperatedly. She was eighty percent sure that he was also rolling his eyes.

"You didn't answer my question," he remarked evasively. "What are you doing here?"

"I almost drowned in this bay," she supplied with a shrug. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"You drowned in this bay," he answered after a moment's pause.

"_Almost_ drowned," Meredith corrected idly. She went back to fingering the label of the tequila bottle, torn by an admiration of its shine and the inexplicable desire to tear it in half.

Derek laughed; a hollow, bitter, ugly thing that made the hairs on the back of Meredith's neck stand erect. "No, you drowned," he insisted, his tone anything but light. "You drowned and, for three hours, you were dead."

In her mind's eye, Meredith could see the empty hospital, with Denny and Dylan and Bonnie and Liz and Doc and the water on the floor of the hallway and the edges that seemed to blur into each other.

She hadn't come to the bay to remember drowning. She had come to remember that one fuzzy moment in the hallway when she'd felt her mother's arms around her.

"I wasn't dead," she said finally, her voice whisper-soft. "I wasn't alive, maybe, but I wasn't dead."

Behind her, Derek sucked in an audible breath. "Meredith," he gritted, "your lips were blue. You weren't breathing. You were dead. You…" His breathing quickened noticeably and, for a moment, silence descended as Derek fought to regain control of his lungs. "You died," he concluded quietly, stumbling clumsily over the words.

The gentle tremor in his voice was enough to drag her gaze from the unopened tequila bottle. "I didn't die," she hissed vehemently, meeting his forlorn expression with a biting glare. "You did."

"Mmm," he agreed softly as his eyes scanned the floor. "Sometimes, I do think a part of me died that day."

"_I spent the scariest hour of my life trying to breathe for you."_

"_I can't leave you. But you're constantly leaving me."_

"_You can't trust anybody. And no matter what I do, you're always going to look for reasons not to trust me. I can't do this anymore."_

Her breathing grew labored as his soft, misguided declarations of martyrdom assaulted her mockingly from all sides.

She was hurt. Confused. Betrayed. But, most of all, she was _tired _of Derek's affinity for playing the victim.

_It is NOT all my fault_, she thought vengefully as blood rushed past her ears

"Not a part of you," she sneered. "_All_ of you. The man I loved. McDreamy. The knight in shining…whatever. That guy who pulled me out of the tub and held me when I snored and told me that he'd been in love with me forever…_that _guy died. Not a part of him, either. _All _of him. Every last bit."

His brow creased ever so gently as he watched the tears collect like raindrops in the corners of her eyes. "Meredith…"

"No!" she cried angrily, gesturing wildly with her free arm. "I gave up for ten seconds. _Ten _seconds, Derek! You're right. I drowned. I drowned, but I spent the hours after that in some HELL where Bonnie was bleeding and Doc was barking and Denny kept talking about how one whiff was enough. And you know what sucks? What _really, really _sucks? I was okay in hell!" She paused for breath as her words echoed along the empty docks.

"I was okay in hell," she hissed, her green eyes boring into him. "I was okay living in denial, trying to keep Bonnie from bleeding and scratching Doc behind the ears and listening to Denny talk about Izzie. I was FINE until he started talking to me about what _my dying_ would do to you."

Derek's eyes widened in alarm. _Nonsense. She's talking nonsense. I go on one date, and she heads to the harbor with a bottle of tequila and goes completely insane._

"Meredith," he began hesitantly, "the brain excretes a lot of complicated chemicals when the body is shutting down. What you think you saw…"

"Don't do that," she snapped, meeting his gaze darkly. "Don't spout a bunch of medical terms at me. Don't talk to me like I'm some idiot who doesn't understand the workings of the human nervous system, and…and _don't _try to trivialize what I saw or didn't see while I was fighting my way back to you."

Derek narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "While you were _fighting_?" he sputtered incredulously. "Oh, that's rich. That's ridiculous, Meredith! You weren't fighting! You were dead! You had no pulse and your lips were blue! You flatlined! _Dr. Bailey_ had to shock you. The _chief _was responsible for trying to raise your temp. Dr. Burke pushed so much epi into you that your levels maxed out. _They _fought. You were just…you were just…" He trailed off, and his entire body began to tremble as the violent images overtook him.

She felt a tiny twinge of sympathy, watching him, but then she caught a flash of his stone-cold glare as he told her that he'd called her bluff, and she shoved her sympathy beneath the part of her that still grieved for her mother and for Susan and for Thatcher and…well, for Derek.

"I fought," she deadpanned, her voice low and taut with resolve. "I fought every damn day for you."

"You left me," he accused, shaking his head to will the tears away. "Things got hard and life got complicated, and you dipped your head under the surface of the bathwater and decided it'd be better to drown."

"Is that really what you think?" Meredith murmured inquisitively. Before, she'd been yelling. Angry. Irate, even. Now, her voice was barely a breath of air. "That life got hard, so I just gave up?"

"You could've _talked_ to me," he sputtered in response. "I know things were bad, but…you could've _said _something."

She directed her gaze back across the bay. "I wasn't ready," she replied curtly.

Derek let out a resentful snort of incredulity. "You weren't ready," he repeated dryly, "so you decided to go for a swim in the freezing cold bay instead."

She closed her eyes against the bitterness in his voice. "I made a stupid, split-second decision that I lived to regret," she countered haltingly in careful, measured tones. "I'm not justifying it. But…" She sucked in a deep breath and allowed a single, tiny tear to glide down her cheek. "I came back, Derek. I fought my way back. I didn't…" She exhaled slowly and dropped her gaze to the water below. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and pleading.

"I made a stupid decision, but it wasn't the last decision I ever made."

"No," he agreed caustically, "because _they_ dragged you back."

She gave him a small, sad smile. "You can't drag the dead."

Silence lingered for a moment as he absorbed the weight of her implication.

Finally, Derek sucked in a breath. "Three hours is a long time, Meredith."

Her lips quirked ironically. "Yeah, well…I needed it."

"Did you really?" Derek demanded. "Did you even use it?" He turned his head and squinted so as to study her more closely. "Because you came back, but you were still distant, still reticent. Nothing changed."

She was quiet for so long that he began to wonder if she'd even heard him.

"You did," she said finally. For the first time he could ever remember, she sounded small and childlike and…scared.

His eyebrows rose in surprise. "Excuse me?"

"You said nothing changed," she repeated, tracing her lips with the cork of the bottle, "but you're wrong. You did. _You_ changed. I wanted to talk, but you stopped wanting to listen. You didn't want to talk about anything difficult. I'd ask you about chief; you wouldn't respond."

"It was my problem," Derek snapped. "I didn't want to burden you. I was afraid you'd end up back in the bathtub."

Meredith smirked at the sky. "The way I remember it, you pulled me out of the bathtub."

"Right," Derek agreed, "but I can't be there every second of every day. I have a job. A life. I'm not always going to be around."

She laughed brokenly. "Yeah," she chortled, "well…you've made that one perfectly clear."

He bristled immediately. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Her nonchalant shrug only angered him further. "You know. I called and you didn't answer. We had sex and you stared at the ceiling. Things got difficult, and you flirted with my sister in a bar. You started ending every romantic speech with an ultimatum." She waved a hand dismissively. "After awhile, I started to get the message."

He could feel his temperature rising, could feel the flush creeping up his cheeks as he clenched his fists at his sides. "This isn't all my fault," he muttered through gritted teeth.

"No," Meredith agreed lightly. "But it's not all mine either. I thought it was, for awhile, but…" She trailed off and shrugged.

"But what?" Derek demanded irately.

She heaved a sigh and brushed the neck of the bottle with her lower lip. "It's not all my fault."

Derek's brow furrowed in anger. "I'm not the one with trust issues," he hissed in fury.

"Sure you are," she volleyed noncommittally. "Addison cheated. I gave up. You're afraid I'm going to do it again."

His breath hitched in his throat as her words hit home.

"You keep saying I gave up," Meredith continued, "but you're forgetting that you gave up first."

"What are you talking about?" he stammered finally. "I didn't…"

"You did," Meredith interrupted directly, casting him a cool glare over her shoulder. "You chose Addison. You had a wife, and I fought for you anyway, but in the end, you chose her." She laughed tersely at the absurdity of it all. "She didn't drive you crazy, you said. Hell, you flew across the country to get away from her, but when she came knocking, you answered. We were about to make rules, and you walked away. You picked Satan over me." The laugh grew almost manic. "Satan! You called her Satan, Derek! And you barely knew me! You only knew about the mother with Alzheimer's! You didn't know about the father that left to create another bright-and-shiny family or the pink hair or the trip to Europe or the fact that my mother never wanted me. You didn't know any of the _real _dark & twisty stuff, and _still, _when faced with the choice of Meredith Grey or Satan, you chose Satan."

Her voice broke on the last word, releasing a tiny trickle of self-loathing that started in his temple and ended in his gut. He wanted to leave, to close his eyes against the pain and forget that he'd spent the past year hurting everyone, but a deep sense of need kept him rooted in place.

He knew he needed to say something. He just didn't know what to say, so he said the only word that surfaced with any sort of clarity.

"Meredith…"

Pleading. He was _pleading _with her.

It didn't matter.

"Don't you get it?" she demanded, whirling around to face him. "Even then, you knew I wasn't good enough. How the hell was I supposed to believe you'd stick around to see the hurricane if you couldn't even stand to stomach a little bit of rain?"

He couldn't help but think, even as his world was crumbling around him, that she had picked a hell of a time to start constructing decent metaphors.

His lips parted as he forced himself to meet her gaze, and his heart broke when he saw the gentle sheen of tears in her eyes.

Self-preservation didn't seem so important anymore.

"That's not…" He trailed off and inhaled deeply, meeting her gaze and forcing himself to find the words to fix this, this beautiful, broken thing between them.

"I didn't choose Addison because you weren't good enough."

She snorted. "Right."

"I didn't," he insisted, closing the distance between them so he could put his hand on her arm. To his surprise, she didn't shake him off. Of course, she wouldn't look at him either.

He cleared his throat softly. "Meredith…I chose Addison because…because I knew that, if she left—if she chose to walk away—I'd be okay."

She narrowed her eyes doubtfully.

He squeezed her arm and plodded on. "You and I…it had been almost two months, and I had already felt twice as much for you as I ever did for Addison. Watching you leave would have killed me."

Meredith gave him a look of complete and total disbelief. "So you walked away first," she finished expectantly.

He nodded. "I just…I couldn't do it again. Addison and I were married for eleven years, Mere, and in the end, I wasn't enough for her. She saw something in me that sent her straight into the arms of another man." He inhaled slowly and reached up to stroke her face. "Don't you see? I had to walk away. I was afraid that, if I stayed, you'd see what she saw, and you'd be gone."

"So you left instead." She shook her head and let loose a hollow chuckle. "You did what everyone else does. You walked away."

"I…"

He was going to argue. He was going to make some excuse for his behavior, something that had to do with marriage and honor and vows and the sight of God, but the words sounded hollow, even to him.

She had owned up to her mistake. He owed it to her to do the same.

"I walked away," he conceded. He stroked the side of her face gently, willing her to look to him. When she obliged, the corners of his mouth curled in a small, tentative smile. "But I came back," he finished, his eyes glittering meaningfully in the lamplight.

"So did I," Meredith reminded him boldly. "But apparently, my coming back meant nothing to you."

Behind the defiant tilt to her chin and the tightness in her jaw, he could see the hurt she was trying so desperately to hide. His face immediately twisted in sympathy.

"It should have," he insisted quietly, his voice full of regret.

"Yeah," she agreed softly, pressing her lips briefly to the mouth of the unopened bottle. "It should have."

He climbed up onto the boxes and sat beside her. For a long while, they gazed out across the water in silence, each listening to the other breathe.

"There are a million places in this city," Meredith said finally, her voice soft and low and defeated. "You could've gone anywhere. Why come here?"

He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes, allowing the gentle scent of lavender to assault his senses as he drew tiny circles on Meredith's forearm with the pad of his thumb. They were a far cry from okay. Tension hung heavy in the air, and breathing was still painful. Still, he felt content. Sated. Full.

Only an hour ago, he'd been sitting in a crowded room with a nurse that smelled like cinnamon and wondering if he was ever going to feel full again. It had been a miserable experience.

He opened his eyes and cast a sideways glance at the love of his life. "Things ended badly tonight," he admitted quietly. "I needed a reason to keep hoping."

Her lips curled slightly upward as she dropped her gaze to the floor.

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "Me too."


End file.
